US Routinely Spies on Israel Nukes: Book

The United States routinely spies on Israel to try to gather information on its assumed atomic arsenal and secret government deliberations, a new official history of Israel’s intelligence services says.

While espionage by allies on their friends is not uncommon, it is rare that state-sponsored publications acknowledge it. Israeli-U.S. ties have been especially touchy in this regard since a U.S. Navy analyst, Jonathan Pollard, was jailed for life for treason in 1987 for passing classified documents to Israel.

According to "Masterpiece: An Inside Look at Sixty Years of Israeli Intelligence", American spy agencies use technologies like electronic eavesdropping, and trained staff from the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, for "methodical intelligence gathering".

"The United States has been after Israel’s non-conventional capabilities and what goes on at the decision-making echelons," says the book in a chapter on counter-espionage written by Barak Ben-Zur, a retired Shin Bet internal security service officer.

Israel is widely believed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear arms. Israeli officials refuse any comment on this under a longstanding "strategic ambiguity" policy.

While successive U.S. administrations have accepted this reticence, Israel’s so-called "bomb in the basement" has been a worry for Washington — especially during the Middle East wars of 1967 and 1973, when fighting inflamed the wider Cold War.

Declassified Pentagon documents published in a 2004 book about then U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld estimated that Israel had 80 nuclear warheads. Last May, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put the number of Israeli bombs at around 150.

The issue has taken on new relevance recently given Western fears that Iran’s nuclear program could have military designs — despite denials by Tehran. Israel has vowed to prevent its arch-foe from getting the bomb, but some analysts believe Israel could instead build up an overt nuclear deterrence against Iran.

Due out later this month, "Masterpiece" is published by the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Centre and includes prefaces by chiefs of Israel’s military intelligence, the domestic Shin Bet and the Mossad spy service active abroad.

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